I'm so glad that Hamster's Arcade Archives are a thing.

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trap15
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Re: I'm so glad that Hamster's Arcade Archives are a thing.

Post by trap15 »

On the subject of Dragon Buster, I pulled out my X68000 the other day to show some folks on stream the powerful diagonal control and promptly showed my entire ass to the world. It doesn't have proper 8-way, it's still cursed 4-way controls, and I don't know why I ever thought otherwise. Maybe it's just because inputting the jump is easier on pad than on stick :oops:
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Re: I'm so glad that Hamster's Arcade Archives are a thing.

Post by BIL »

:lol: Image I went and nabbed a copy a few weeks back, no regrets whatsoever (<333 Dempa). I was gonna torment myself with the AC controls anyway, they're perversely pleasurable imo. >_> Some DRAGON ZEN not losing your cool in front of a foe and eating an end-to-end juggle :cool:
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Re: I'm so glad that Hamster's Arcade Archives are a thing.

Post by BIL »

Hm. Hopping Mappy is kind of an isometric maze chaser. Which is less interesting than the original's sidescrolling maze chaser, imo. Seems aight, but I'm a casual MZC fan at most. Protip: Hold the button to move faster, much better.

The pogo thing... guess it was trendy, ala Wonderboy's skateboard. Weird. I did bust Goro's fuckin head open. That should be a bipedal mecha slamming down on a tank god dammit.

Still WTB dream Grobda/Mappy crossover! Actually tbh still WTB Grobda. I wish Seibu had done a game starring the sniper tank. You know the one, sneaky brown n' red fucker.

Actually hell, do a crossover STG featuring the meanest sneakiest buggers from across Toaplan, Konami, Seibu and NMK, to name four. I'd put my money on those godawful Trigon bastards with the shotgun blasts.
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Re: I'm so glad that Hamster's Arcade Archives are a thing.

Post by BrianC »

I might give Hopping Mappy a try. It has some nice music, and the scoring system looks interesting.

Edit: Just realized that it's the same scoring system from the first game only with identical items having nice animations instead of blinking.
Last edited by BrianC on Thu Jan 20, 2022 7:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
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BIL
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Re: I'm so glad that Hamster's Arcade Archives are a thing.

Post by BIL »

Messed about in MAME a bit this morning - I'd not noticed the multiplier, that does seem cool (not entirely sure how it works, but it's a nice hook). I was genuinely surprised that you can recall jumps, even very late - that's exactly what I'd expect the game's concept to deny.

Lovely Mappy aesthetic as usual - I think this little AC/FC series is one of gaming's most underratedly charming. I always chill with mappehs. :cool: Well maybe not the very first, with its loud colours on hard black BG. But the pastel-toned followups with blue skies and green greens always chill! And besides, OG Mappeh is Hard-Boiled Police Story Image (my Battle Mania BOI Takayan loves Mappy, legit inspirational and hilarious dude)

TBH though, I find the hopping kind of annoying, on a fundamental level. I dunno, I'm getting old I guess. :lol: All the previous Nyamcos (har!) have been instabuys for me but I'll give this one a thinky-thunk.
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Re: I'm so glad that Hamster's Arcade Archives are a thing.

Post by BrianC »

I bought it and I'm liking it so far, but I also double dipped on Mappy since I didn't want to leave Hopping Mappy by itself. A bit disappointed with the preference settings compared to other Namco games. Just speed adjustment. The original Mappy has a fix for an infamous scoring bug that gives out the wrong point value if enough enemies are killed with the door beam.
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I'm so glad that Hamster's Arcade Archives are a thing.

Post by DenimDemon »

When I was a child my father got me a famiclon preloaded with a bunch of games ( was still playing on a Spectrum at the time so it felt quiet an upgrade with fast loads and so many Color),Mappy was one of those games…along Dig Dug, that Circus games, Contra and a thousand variants of Mario Bros. Played that Mappy famicom to death. Good times. Yeah Mappy it’s a household name to me and will check this one on a later date. Still scratching my head around Gunnail and a few others.
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I'm so glad that Hamster's Arcade Archives are a thing.

Post by DenimDemon »

I’m starting to feel that i could actually 1cc Gunnail… meanwhile found that if you destroy the boss on stage3 before the time runs out, you get more enemies coming at you after the boss and it’s a great opportunity to rank your score and stock some bombs or power ups. And since the game give you so many bombs and you replenish and stock one shield with each extended there’s definitely enough room for a credit clear.
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Re: I'm so glad that Hamster's Arcade Archives are a thing.

Post by BIL »

DenimDemon wrote:I’m starting to feel that i could actually 1cc Gunnail… meanwhile found that if you destroy the boss on stage3 before the time runs out, you get more enemies coming at you after the boss and it’s a great opportunity to rank your score and stock some bombs or power ups. And since the game give you so many bombs and you replenish and stock one shield with each extended there’s definitely enough room for a credit clear.
Yeah, exactly. :smile: At first I was "Damn, this is brisk, probably gonna leave it at a clear" but after a weekend it's like "THAT ALL U GOT PUNK?!"

...then you ditch the shields, and immediately remember why you were scurred to begin with :shock: :lol: Baby steps...

Wonderful game. And with XEXEX landing recently, and M2 HishouSameSame getting console debuts in a few months as well, if Thunder Dragon 2 hits soon, this'll be among the strongest STG eras on console, ever. TD2 will be outright the best STG and crowning jewel of the entire ACA series thus far, imo... what an absolute thoroughbred of a game.

I love how disciplined, no-nonsense home releases have not just survived but outright surpassed previous gens, this way. I could happily "retire" on just my PS4, at this rate. Gonna shake up my Top 25 this year for the first time in a while.
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Re: I'm so glad that Hamster's Arcade Archives are a thing.

Post by Sima Tuna »

BIL wrote:if Thunder Dragon 2 hits soon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qu4v7UrS9Wk

Little do you realize that the next few weeks will consist of ports of Athena, Ninja Clowns and Karnov.
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Re: I'm so glad that Hamster's Arcade Archives are a thing.

Post by BIL »

Nah, Athena's all done up, and so is Psycho Soldier (which is an infinitely better game). Karnov would be rad, I fuckin wish. 3; Ninja Clowns what's that, Combatribes?! :shock: This is all sounding awesome, aside from that POS Athena!

ACA NMK stuff tends to show up without fuss, Hachamecha outta nowhere last year :cool: I'm feelin pretty good about it, as with Gunnail a few weeks back. (I really thought TD2 would be first, but then I'd not played Gunnail, and it turned out to be a fucking rad Toaplanesque, possibly my favourite little subgenre Image)

Pattern seems to be [Namco] [Other] [Repeat], so while the spectre of Wonder Momo lurks, I ain't bothered. Hell, might be a Finest Hour or Metal Hawk in there, Mirai Ninja's hardware being emulated. I like the advent calendar approach, tbh. After several decades of gruelling collecting, I just wanna chill out and work on my 1CC bucket list.

Also if something you want is delayed, just git gud at stuff that's out! ;3 (I understand the thrill of "WAO ITS FINALLY HERE AND ON TEH SCREEN," believe me! But it fades fast, unlike the shoeprints on your ass that a rugged arcade game will dish out... until you finally reply with an authoritative beatdown of your own - your cookie dough ass now carved outta mahogany! Image)

ME playin GUNNAIL last week Image
Spoiler
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ME playin GUNNAIL this mornin Image Image
Spoiler
Image


Yeah my score was shite, so fuckin what? Eat my ass! Work in progress bitches! :shock: Image <- dat be my ass in 6mos :cool:

Step up, Tuna-kun. It's never easy, but in the long run, it's the best way for men to live. Image That's what Hokuto no Ken taught me anyway, when Rei told Mamiya she couldn't accompany him to battle, even though he was dying, because she was still a woman, whatever she thought, and a woman should pursue only her own happiness - proving his point when she persisted, by tearing her blouse off and causing her gorgeous tits to bounce free, to her shame! Image ("See? A man wouldn't cover his chest! LMAO") Oh man, poor Rei and Mamiya. :cry:

Image

Like the avenging Kenshiro, turn your KANASHIMI over TD2 (it'll be here! UNLIKE Ken's BFF Rei 3;) into IKARI, and beat Saigo no Nindou's third stage this weekend, Tuna-kun. When the Shinobi Musket Corps' bullets are pinging uselessly off your whirling kusarigama, gore and poop flooding the haunted wilderness as you leave acres of sliced corpses in your wake, you will forget this trifling obstacle, and return refreshed! Image
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Re: I'm so glad that Hamster's Arcade Archives are a thing.

Post by Sima Tuna »

Image

Damn, that cuts deep. Inspirational shit, man.
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Re: I'm so glad that Hamster's Arcade Archives are a thing.

Post by BIL »

I know right! :shock:

EDIT: Oh wao, Gunnail HI-SPEED DEMENSION's powerup carriers are safe 2 touch! :o The MAXIMUM SPEEDO stages are so cool once you've got the layouts down, flooring it nonstop while macroslicing through strikers. STG + Racing, always memorisation squared, haha.

EDIT2: Wowowow, the way you get ALL your shields back @ max level up, and therefore get to ram the shit out of bullets and enemies to that rad *DSHHH* slam not once, or twice, but three times per run, depending on how high you're aiming... them metal-on-metal nails-hard feels, clobbering your ship into the enemy and going from lvl0 to MAX in seconds at each extend, the scattering Options tearing through anything in their path like evil hubcaps before *CHAKK*ing back on Image Like a YagawaBat* on extra crack.

RAMMING IN THE NAME OF THE LORD Image

Image

We're rammin' (rammin')
Rammin' (rammin')

I WANNA RAM IT IN U Image
Whoo yeah!
Rammin', rammin', rammin,' rammin'

HOPE U LIEK RAMMIN 2 Image


Such an eccentric yet consistently excellent little bugger. That Gun Frontier heat-hazing SPATIAL BOMB is shit-hot, too. Instant rescue+invulnerable for flexibility, concentrated high-damage area for precision, and boosts your speed while active (hax :cool:), letting you practically teleport to the other end of the screen. So many odd little details working in harmony here.
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DenimDemon
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Re: I'm so glad that Hamster's Arcade Archives are a thing.

Post by DenimDemon »

Yeah it’s awesome you replenish shield and adds 1 stock. And the music on those speed stages??!! [VICTORY HAND]️
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Re: I'm so glad that Hamster's Arcade Archives are a thing.

Post by Skyknight »

Somehow, I’m not seeing Hamster as too interested in Ninja Clowns. That it came from the same developers as of Time Killers should tell you plenty.

Note that they’re doing Taito releases, too (you noticed Raimais recently, yes?). So don’t be surprised if Chack ‘n’ Pop is next.

(Just someone tell me what the deal about Big Bang/Thunder Dragon 2 is, besides having one of Namiki Manabu’s first soundtracks. The plays I’ve seen didn’t make it look that interesting.)
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Re: I'm so glad that Hamster's Arcade Archives are a thing.

Post by BIL »

DenimDemon wrote:Yeah it’s awesome you replenish shield and adds 1 stock. And the music on those speed stages??!! [VICTORY HAND]️
I just realised this means you can park right on top of 'em and pointblank, so you grab the SPEEDUP as it flies up :mrgreen:

Image

And with the other middleweights that shoot + do contact damage as usual, the bomb's burst invincibility can let you do the same move, grabbing 'em up three at a time - so much nicer than trying to grab the boost as it falls downscreen.
Skyknight wrote:(Just someone tell me what the deal about Big Bang/Thunder Dragon 2 is, besides having one of Namiki Manabu’s first soundtracks. The plays I’ve seen didn’t make it look that interesting.)
Just an early-90s proto-Psikyo vert ala Sonic Wings, refined to perfection and given a Dangunesque adrenaline shot. Both ship types handle ultra-smoothly - the hitbox and move speed VS pattern/wave design is intense yet super comfy - their firepower is ripping, and the Recca/Dangun-style waveshredding system encourages breakneck aggression for mo bigger medals.

It's much more exciting at the controls than it might appear, on account of the speedkilling - you're always skirmishing, shredding through zako and slicing past their snipes while juggling Toaplan-worthy tank hordes. Bombs are plentiful and devastating, lifesaving escapes and screen-flattening godhammers alike. Worth noting Stage 1 looks kinda bland at a glance, having no ground mixup and basic waves, but in practice it's one of those openers perfect for demolition.

No-nonsense kill waves for more waves system + monster guns + super-agile ships VS tight patterns, with a uniquely lovable aesthetic. The pixel art is absolutely first-rate, earthy and gunmetalled and tightly-detailed, yet subtly stubbeh n' cute, from the tiniest zako to the most brutally massive machines. I'd actually say the OST is its only real weakness, not for the BGM itself - the handful it has are uncommonly well-suited to extended listening, catchy and uptempo yet coolly distant, with Namiki's gorgeously bittersweet notes breezing over the pummelling SFX - just the small tracklist. A tiny nick not just forgiven but outright forgotten when at the controls, imo.
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Re: I'm so glad that Hamster's Arcade Archives are a thing.

Post by Marc »

I can't get into Gunnail. It's fucking me so hard, I really can't get my head around it.
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Re: I'm so glad that Hamster's Arcade Archives are a thing.

Post by BIL »

How's your practicing? I always find Toaplanesques (Raiden, Trigon, Gunnail etc) are especially compatible with stage-by-stage practice (which is a great way to nail down basic 1CCs in general). Learn to nomiss (and preferably no-bomb) a stage, save at the boss. Do him too, then repeat for next stage. Don't spend five minutes cruising through the first couple stages, only to get meatgrindered and restart - it's great when you're new and novelty is still there, but it'll soon sap you.

Stage-by-stage, you'll rapidly learn the chokepoints (Gunnail's st2 midboss duo w/gunboat support drove me back, at first; now it's an absolute pleasure demolishing the lot, in one brutal right-to-left sweep), and also how to budget bombs. You'll also see what the game looks like to a powered-up player, versus a depowered and struggling one.

It'll be a bit of a blur at first, but when you return to st1, I bet you'll be surprised at how much you've absorbed this way, and how much less intimidating the game feels. What I like to do from there, if I'm still not confident to go for the clear, is start placing the saves further and further apart. So NMNB st1+2, save. NMNB st3+4, etc. It's about gradually bridging those gaps, and forming the intel and confidence for a game-length plan.

Anyhoo, just me two cents/pence. ;3 It's a tough game by wider genre standards, for sure - just not as tough as Eastplan U's real punishers, like Same3, TatsuOu and Raiden II. Where those games will force you to suffer and die until you're good enough, Gunnail's happy to let you bomb, or take a knock and instantly regain max power without being checkpointed, etc. It's a lovely game in this sense, tough but affectionate Image

The above strategy is why I'm pleased as punch with even one savestate, let alone the couple or more you can wangle out of ACA by playing on different user accounts :cool: Yo, arcade heads ain't get SHIT :shock: They did get a vibrant in-person communiteh, and the team spirit that fosters great results, plus much greater media support of the genre - but rather than chase the ghost of a past you were probably never there for, accept you live in a different time, and have been given different means to arrive at the same goal of competence, or if so desired, excellence. Image That's what my granny told me anyway!
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Re: I'm so glad that Hamster's Arcade Archives are a thing.

Post by Rastan78 »

That's a good strategy especially for a single save state type of setup.

Gunnail is absolutely awesome, but I'm having a little bit of a hard time enjoying it. Something about the rapidly flashing bullets is just really uncomfortable for some reason. Normally I'm not sensitive to that kind of stuff. It's hard to describe. They don't really bother me or give me a headache, it's just sort of hard to track them with my peripheral vision. Pretty aggressive visual design choice IMO. But it's probably one of those things that will bother certain people and others will hardly even notice. And I imagine the sample and hold motion blur of an LCD screen isn't helping either.
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BIL
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Re: I'm so glad that Hamster's Arcade Archives are a thing.

Post by BIL »

Yeah, definitely a perennial sticking point with NMK, dating all the way back to Argus. Visibility-wise, I think Task Force Harrier and Thunder Dragon 2 did the best... still got the flashers ( :oops: ), but the purples/blues used generally stand out against the earthy BGs. Worst I've seen are the Sky and Desert stages of P47 Thunderbolt and USAAF Mustang, respectively... yellow/brown flashers against blazing sunset and sandy mountainside, with blistering-fast scrolling, to boot. Two of those "come on, seriously?" visibility nadirs that seems even first-rate STGs are susceptible to. Even Raiden has a real howler in its sixth stage, yellow bullets on white space station 3;

I find Gunnail relatively well-behaved, but it's just an innate annoyance, as you say.

Seems this week is Namco hori STG Pistol Daimyou no Bouken (1990). I vaguely recall the name, but that's all! Hmm. Mysterious name redolent of roving Japanese nobility bustin' caps. Hopefully good!

Image

EDIT: first impression is WTF, this looks and feels like an arcade version of Hana Taka Daka (PCE). Large, cartoony yet well-proportioned sprites and snappily responsive handling. Neato.

EDIT2: Wuuut, this seems pretty good! Again, very HTD/Coryoon, or perhaps the PC Denjins (ain't played em), WRT tone and sprite dimensions. Fans of Kiki Kaikai, Keio Yuugekitai, and Ganbare Goemon will likely dig the style, too! Unusual yet comfy mechanics right off the bat (neat charge shot). Recommend two Button 1s, one auto and one chargeable. Bipedally-oriented player sprite is gonna annoy some, but I'm a run n' gun SOULJAH, I don't give a good god damn. Image

Image

ITS JUST LIKE BACK IN NAM (`w´メ) Think I'll take a punt on this one, having sat out Hopping Mappy's ruthless cockblock of my mecha carnage dreams.

EDIT3: Yeah, this is cool. The anti-air charge shot is something I've not encountered elsewhere, super satisfying using to to SRK the bejeezus outta hopping heavies.

Image

You don't want none of this TANEGASHIMA, son! The Darius-style route select might be interesting. The way the character perpetually drifts groundward if not moving while airborne is odd, but seems harmless - no inertia sludge, it controls exactly like a conventional STG otherwise. Pleasantly surprised here. Youngest ACA Namco to date by some margin, a great sign imo.
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Re: I'm so glad that Hamster's Arcade Archives are a thing.

Post by Flashman »

BIL wrote:How's your practicing? I always find Toaplanesques (Raiden, Trigon, Gunnail etc) are especially compatible with stage-by-stage practice (which is a great way to nail down basic 1CCs in general). Learn to nomiss (and preferably no-bomb) a stage, save at the boss. Do him too, then repeat for next stage. Don't spend five minutes cruising through the first couple stages, only to get meatgrindered and restart - it's great when you're new and novelty is still there, but it'll soon sap you.
Yes, I'm with you on that philosophy and this is where I wish ACA had a proper save-slot system - the one save state at a time (and very easy to press the wrong button in the menu and delete it) is a bit of a downside. You would think over the years, they'd have heard this complaint and sorted it; I doubt a 3 save-slot system can be that hard to implement.

On the other hand £5.00 for perfect conversions of such great arcade games, it's hard to grumble too much, but I was attempting to go for a Trigon 1CC a while back using this method, and the save state system did me in.

Agree about Gunnail, rock hard :lol:
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Re: I'm so glad that Hamster's Arcade Archives are a thing.

Post by BIL »

Man, I really like Pistol Daimyou. Did some minor reading up, to confirm how things work. Basically:

Armour:
1) break blue vases for Hanafuda cards.
2) collect matching three for a prize ball, bust it open for a +1HP wooden armour. mixed cards get you the big donger eggplant and a razz. :lol:
3) if you've already got wood (bwaaa!), you'll get a +2HP iron armour, which'll revert to wood if hit.

Shot Power Up: break a yellow vase and grab the powerup. There's three per credit, apparently. (cheers Strategywiki)

As for weapons, seems it's just [rapid] and two levels of charge shot. Big enemies demand the charge shot. A direct hit from an L2 will kill most anything, however, if you're up against multiple biggies, it's better to take a fighting game-esque approach. You know how Guiles/etc will continuously ready Sonic Booms and Flashkicks, beginning a new charge the instant the current one fires? Use L1s like that.

You might feel a bit underpowered at first, but the game is clearly designed for 100% shootdowns with good use of the three shot types. While I love StrategyWiki's range of coverage, I suggest ignoring the comment on there about L1 charges being useless - relying on either rapid or L2 is a great way to get swamped by midsized hordes.

If you have to fly between a tight gap, holding [back] against the screen edge, or moving horizontally, will stop Daimyou from falling.

The stage select is a lot of fun... seems a straight higher=easier, lower=harder system, though it's still early.

Went looking for impressions on here, found only that Perikles had steamrolled its easiest route with a 1LC after a couple attempts. Was mildly concerned it might be a pushover, particularly with the aesthetic polish. Then I looked up good ol' HG101, and got my usual seal of excellence: "OMFG ITS IMPOSSIBLE BUHHH" Good job dudes, I can always trust you. :cool: (scrub-to-playa translation: "This is reasonably substantial, chap!")
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Re: I'm so glad that Hamster's Arcade Archives are a thing.

Post by Rastan78 »

One particularly nasty design choice in Gunnail is that you can get snipered by offscreen enemies. Is it safe to say in most Toaplan style shmups that doesn't happen? In Raiden for example you can use the fact that sniper tanks don't fire from off screen to your advantage. Just scroll them out of sight to simplify certain tricky sections. Sniper tanks are already total dicks in Raiden, but imagine if they could snipe from off screen.

Not to mention the fairly brief invincibility when respawning after a death. Anyone else immediately taken a second death trying to scoop up a powerup and the invincibility wears off? Ah well. I guess it's just a case of git good bro. Memorizers tend to feel massively easier once you have a decent route down.
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BIL
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Re: I'm so glad that Hamster's Arcade Archives are a thing.

Post by BIL »

IIRC yeah, Toaplan cut off enemies' ammo when they're not in sight; a less-reported but equally significant amenity next to the famous pointblank guard.

(now you mention it, this is another reason FM Towns Hishouzame feels extra-wrong; enemies cut off by the port's resolution, but still existing in the unseen playfield, will blast away just fine. so you're forever exchanging fire with enemies you can't see, often killing stuff with no idea what was even there. VING really needed that Rayforce TATE, where they knocked it out of the park on Saturn.

it's funny... the MD Kyuukyoku Tiger team weren't particularly vaunted, AFAIK, but they avoided a very similar blunder with that infamously crash-zoomed port. just like Toaplan's own ports, stuff doesn't exist until it passes the new, smaller screen perimeter)

What really bothers me in Gunnail is the slightly boned horizontal pan. Rather than the Y-axis panning all the way over to playfield's edge as you approach, like it does in Toaplan and Seibu's games, you instead need to "push" the ship against the screen edge for the last bit. Makes an already bad situation worse. SNK's Guevara features a similar blunder, giving it 90% of its fearsome rep even among the Japanese player base.

That said, Gunnail is nowhere as horribly affected as Guevara - there's only a thin strip of screen either side (Guevara has entire stages stretching off into the Y-Axis, blinding you until memorised), and there's generally no reason to go over there, unlike something like Raiden DX where you're constantly hunting down medals and towers.

It's a microcosm of the game itself, in a way. Lots of odd, sometimes amateurish little things that could easily bring an STG down in aggregate, somehow coexisting.

I actually find the post-hit recovery really generous, the ship keeps barrel-rolling for quite a bit. You can get quite abusive with it AFAIK. :cool:

Somewhat related, discovered last night that the st3 boss is harmless to fly through, as if it's a ground enemy. You probably don't want to do this - you want to kill it ASAP to reap the army of item carriers behind him, and that's done quickest from the front - but I like cataloguing this stuff. Image
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Re: I'm so glad that Hamster's Arcade Archives are a thing.

Post by trap15 »

Hot tip for anyone just looking for a Gunnail clear and not scoring: actually do score stage 1. Suicide all those shields first thing and just no-miss the stage. You'll get the first extend in early stage 2, and then have 4 shields for the body of the game. You'll then get the 2nd extend around early stage 7 (or potentially a bit earlier if you accidentally lose too many shields!), priming you with plenty of resources for the hardest parts of the game. If you don't score stage 1 you probably will not reach the 2nd extend at a useful time.
Rastan78 wrote:One particularly nasty design choice in Gunnail is that you can get snipered by offscreen enemies.
I've never seen this happen outside of a single place (the very end of Stage 8 where a single tank has the ability to basically ride the bottom of the screen scroll and thus still be allowed to shoot but only being killable by bomb or Red Flamethrower), and I've played the game a lot. The horizontal scrolling definitely stops enemies from shooting, as long as the shot source is off screen (e.g. pretty sure if the turret tip itself is on-screen it can fire).
BIL wrote:What really bothers me in Gunnail is the slightly boned horizontal pan.
I definitely can't condone this goofball issue (were they thinking "do the opposite of Raiden!" or something? Raiden has too little scroll space, and Gunnail has too much, for their given horizontal panning speed), but it lets you get away with some really funny scams where you're backed against the wall and about to get shot, but you push into the wall and avoid it with the scrolling :lol:
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<S.Yagawa> I like the challenge of "doing the impossible" with older hardware, and pushing it as far as it can go.
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DenimDemon
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I'm so glad that Hamster's Arcade Archives are a thing.

Post by DenimDemon »

^ yep that’s what I do all the time. Suicide on stage 1 and get full restock by the end of stage. Then score up till the next extend. I’m really close to 1cc just haven’t had the time to play much and practiced with so much work lately.
Gunnail took my attention of Xexex and Mutant Night which I was really enjoying even if it’s near Ghouls n Ghosts difficulty/unpredictability was getting in my nerves. Such a cute little guy but such a huge hit box, jesus I swear some of those flying bastards don’t even touch me. But I’m a UPL fanboy so I won’t say bad things about Mutant Night. I wish there was a super easy mode where I could just enjoy the fantastic mood the game has.
So I’m not in a rush to new ACA I’ll just keep adding them to my list and clean the back log while maintaining my cool.
I can retire in this console generation. Between this stuff and my old stuff, I’m cool.
https://youtu.be/8p3UaG_mXpk
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Rastan78
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Joined: Wed Jan 26, 2005 2:08 am

Re: I'm so glad that Hamster's Arcade Archives are a thing.

Post by Rastan78 »

trap15 wrote:The horizontal scrolling definitely stops enemies from shooting, as long as the shot source is off screen (e.g. pretty sure if the turret tip itself is on-screen it can fire).
Ah that makes sense. I played a little more and I think what I was seeing were shots coming from sniper tanks that just had a few pixels of their gun on screen while the main body of the tank wasn't. It creates a pretty strong illusion of the shot coming from off screen.
trap15 wrote:I definitely can't condone this goofball issue (were they thinking "do the opposite of Raiden!" or something? Raiden has too little scroll space, and Gunnail has too much, for their given horizontal panning speed), but it lets you get away with some really funny scams where you're backed against the wall and about to get shot, but you push into the wall and avoid it with the scrolling :lol:
I've really been liking the PC Engine version of Kyukyoku Tiger. It's like less brutal intro to KT with much faster ship movement and a simplified, but nice bright color palette compared to the arcade.

But I notice that same issue of too much horizontal area to scroll with. It's hard to pin down exactly why it feels that way. Could just be the way they cropped the viewable area when making the switch to 4:3 aspect. Also the squarish native resolution of the port is stretched horizontally to fill out the 4:3 aspect, so that probably adds to the effect.

I wonder what the ideal width of a playable area is in a vertical 3:4 shmup? Maybe it's an area that's about 1.5 screen widths? Hori shmups seem to get away with having a wide range of vertical scrolling. Horis that are locked with zero vertical movement work fine. They can also have a huge range of vertical movement ie TFIV, and that can work too. With verts it seems there's a sweet spot that works best for most games (assuming they do pan) without too much variation.
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Jeneki
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Re: I'm so glad that Hamster's Arcade Archives are a thing.

Post by Jeneki »

Pistol Daimyo had a scene in High Score Girl. I believe that's the only time I've seen it before.
Typos caused by cat on keyboard.
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BrianC
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Re: I'm so glad that Hamster's Arcade Archives are a thing.

Post by BrianC »

Glad Arcade Archives is going for more obscure stuff. They choose some neat stuff that I wouldn't have heard of otherwise. After years of mostly familiar stuff in Namco Museums, I'm glad to see stuff like Pistol Daimyo and Mirai Ninja.
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EmperorIng
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Re: I'm so glad that Hamster's Arcade Archives are a thing.

Post by EmperorIng »

I almost want to switch my account region and go to the eshop so that my switch homescreen says ACA XEXEX instead of ACA ORIUS.
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